Heroes Not Zombies

Out walking I was attracted to the shape of this plant. I’m no botanist but I think this type of plant used to be known as an “umbellifera“, although I believe the classification system has been changed and botanists don’t use that term any more. Still, I quite like the name. It came from the observation that the form of this flower was of “umbels” which is from the Latin for parasols.

They look like the skeletons of upturned umbrellas.

In fact, each single “umbel” looks a bit like a starburst to me, and isn’t that one of the commonest, most pleasing forms we see in Nature? Who wouldn’t want a Life which shone like stars?

It reminds me of the Sun.

It looks like it’s reaching out in several directions at one.

It’s expansive, growing, developing, reaching out to the rest of the universe.

Then I looked a little more closely as I focused my camera and saw this tiny snail shell on the top left. See it? At about the 10 o’clock position?

And there, in that tiny shell, I see another of my most favourite forms – the spiral.

Oh, how I love spirals.

Is that my Scottish heritage, with its mix of Celt and Pict? I think of the Celtic knots, the triskeles, the Pictish stones. I think of the cup and ring markings at Achnabrek

But most of all I think how life stories are like that – how the path of a life is so much more like a spiral than a straight line.

Here, in this one little image, I see two of the most common, most beautiful of natural forms – the star and the spiral.

The shapes of Life? Or the shapes which give life its form?